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and writing – the tools which human understanding employs to grasp meaning andconvey it to others. 10Keeping this etymology in mind, one can easily understand why hermeneutics beganas a branch of theology, concerned with the principles of biblical interpretation. The holytexts needed to be deciphered in order to make full sense to the reader, and the disciplinedevoted to developing the manuals used in this decipherment was referred to as hermeneutics.We are here able to trace one meaning of the word hermeneutics, which is stillprevalent today in theology and also in other disciplines, such as law and literature:methodology of interpretation. These methodologies naturally assume different forms,depending upon which discipline one is working in. They also depend upon the ambitionsand theoretical background of the interpreter, and they can thus generate different interpretationsof the same text. Accordingly, in the interpretation of texts and other artifacts,there often arises a conflict between different interpretations, in which it is hard to settlewhich interpretation is the correct one. The outcome of this conflict clearly depends onwhat one means by “correct,” here; but let us at this point note that it is precisely thisseemingly endless battle of different interpretations in the humanities that has generateda certain distrust and contempt among the practitioners of the natural sciences, who claimto aim for objective truth and not simply for different opinions.In the beginning of the nineteenth century -- at the same time as modern scientificmedicine was making its early breakthroughs -- Friedrich Schleiermacher attempted todevelop a general hermeneutics, that is, a hermeneutics that would not be limited to acertain discipline or doctrine, but rather would give the general rules of all interpretation.Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics evolved in two complementary directions, one focusingupon the language of the text, and the other upon empathy (Einfühlung) -- the attempt tofind out what the author of a document meant, by trying to imagine oneself in hisposition. Wilhelm Dilthey, at the end of the nineteenth century, was influenced by the hermeneuticsof Schleiermacher and tried to reformulate it as the method of the humanitiesdealing with the meaning of artifacts, in contrast to objects of nature. Understanding(Verstehen) and explaining (Erklären) were thus designated as distinct paradigms for,respectively, the humanities (Geisteswissenschaften) and the sciences (Naturwissenschaften).11The idea of hermeneutics as a method peculiar to the humanities in contrast to thesciences found sympathy in many humanistic disciplines. It was used as a theoretical basisfor developing interpretive manuals that described methods for uncovering the intentionsof the author of a text (artifact) or the meaning of the text itself, clear of its author’sintentions. In both cases, however, one is dealing with hermeneutics as a collection ofmethods for uncovering hidden meaning in artifacts through employing knowledge peculiarto the humanities in contrast to the sciences. Before we go any further, let me saythat this is not the kind of hermeneutics Gadamer (or I) will claim to be essential toclinical practice. Patients are not works of literature, although, as we shall see, they sharesome important modes of being-in-the-world with the ontology of texts. This similarityis in fact the reason why doctors can learn and perfect their clinical skills by readingnovels and poetry. The knowledge they gain from this reading, however, is not primarilya knowledge of how texts work, but rather a knowledge about human beings and theirways of being-in-the-world.10Richard E. Palmer, Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger,and Gadamer (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1969), 13.11See ibid., 98-106. The sketch of the development of pre-phenomenological hermeneutics I givehere, in common with Palmer, is (necessarily) crude, but still accurate in its main lines, I think.172